I live in a neighborhood full of dogs, almost every house has one, and a few have two, and at least one has four. Down the street, the neighbors have two dogs. I don't know their names. Dog number one is a very big, fat Chocolate Lab, and number two, is a young, very very big, non fat black Lab, one fo those taller ones that can still run well, unlike a lot of those "thick" Labs, like his bud. They just recently got him. Suddenly, he just appeared in the yard one day and has been there ever since It's got an invisible fence that both dogs have always ignored when something good comes along. Funny thing, all the dog's around here that seem to ignore invisible fences have been Labs,and all but one black.

Anyway, I come home from work one morning, and I put my dogs, King and Molly, out into my fenced backyard. Everything looks ok, I close the back door and do a few things, then I open the door, and toss about a dozen pieces of really stale bread out in one corner of the yard for the birds and squirells. I close the door, and am fixing breakfast and suddenly hear Molly and look out the window and she's flying accross the yard, growling and snarling. Her hair is up like a Mohawak (I have never seen it quite like it before), and she crashes into the fence. On the other side are The Labs from down the street. The black one is trying to reach through the fence to the bread and gets one piece and eats it, then suddenly just hops over the 5' fence like it was nothing. Molly is glaring at him, she's got herself so blown up that she looks like she's about 90 pounds instead of 70. King runs over, and calmly walks past Molly and sniffs butts with the Lab, and then pees on the bush nearby, turns and walks away, just ignoring him! This appears to rattle the Lab, he's confused.

When King walks away, the Lab decides to move into the yard further and Molly isn't budging. The Lab puts a foot over her back, and tries to hump her. She spins around, and then starts "throwing punches" at him. After she throws about a dozen, his hair is up and I'm about to run to the door to try to break up the fight that seems to be coming. Molly and the Lab do a little bit of stiff jumping, and then Molly really starts throwing the punches in full force. King slowly walks up behind her, still not really appearing to care much, as usual. Finally, the lab's had enough and bails out, hopping back over the fence and then he and his buddy put on a huge show at the fence. King and Molly snarl and throw punches at both Labs and they finally take off. Molly is very happy with herself, and she's running around the yard having a great time. She's having a great time!

She's a hero!

Then, she tries to pull a coup. Her confidence raised up, she makes a move.

After about a half hour, it's starting to drizzle and I bring them in the house. King does his usual, going to sleep on the floor within a couple of minutes. Molly has a couple of dog biscuits and is looking at King the entire time. I start watching some movie, and Molly slowly walks over and starts humping King, who kicks her off. He glares at her for a minute, and she doesn't do her normal "gulping" that she does when King gives her the eye. King goes to sleep after a couple of minutes. He never even got up after kicking her off.

I get up and walk into the bedroom to check my mail and King is still passed out, on his back, with his feet in the air. A few minutes later, I come back into the family room, just in time to see Molly sitting on King's head, humping like crazy. King kicks her off with all four legs, Molly is airborne and after she lands, Molly retreats to the couch. King walks up and stares her down, at point black range. Normally, Molly can't make eye contact when he does this, and rarely makes a peep, she just wants King to stop looking at her like that!

Not this time! I could see the hair going up on her back, and her lip is shaking. I say, "HEY!! KNOCK IT OFF!" and she gulps and it appears to be over. I take a shower and everything seems ok, and finally go to bed. King goes to sleep next to me at the foot of the bed in his usual 30 seconds, and I'm almost asleep and Molly gets into bed and puts her head on my shoulder and looks at me and sighs. I pat on her for a while and fall asleep. About an hour later, I wake up in time to see King kicking her off again, and this time, he's not kidding around. They do a whole series of snarls and both are throwing punches like a machine gun, like about a hundred in about 30 seconds, each. I say "Hey Hey, what are you doing?", and King sneezes (that's the "ok, I'm done!" signal they use with each other), and Molly does too, then suddenly starts up again, and I yell at her "Molly NO!!", and they are really slapping the hell out of each other, and snarling like hell too. I run out to the family room and they are in the middle of the room, going at it, no bites, just snarling and "punching". I don't understand how they can throw punches this fast.

Finally, Molly realizes that she's outgunned, even though she weighs nearly 10 pounds more than King does (Odd deal there, all the females in the litter they came from are bigger than any of the males), and takes off, running for the spare bedroom. King follows her and she runs back to the family room with King closing rapidly. She jumps up on the couch and King slams into her and pins her up against the back of the couch, and just stares and stares at her, making basically direct eye to eye contact. She stiffens up, and then just slowly rolls over on her back. As she does that, King follows her down, and ends up laying on top of her. He growls very softly, and then presses down with his head, and backs away and drops off the couch. He watches her for a few seconds and has a drink and gets back on the bed. I go back to bed, hoping it was over. Molly comes into the room, and King picks his head up and watches her intently as she gets back up on the bed, and she lays down next to him and licks his eyes and ears gently. It's over. Nobody hurt, the only damage is to Molly's self confidence.

Everything is back to normal. King is the boss, as he's always been. The "revolution" is over. Not that she ever had a chance anyway. He's named King for a reason, I guess. Long live the KING!!

Wow what a tense situation!!..Glad it's all over and worked out without any blood shed. Now hoping those other dog's don't come back and jump over your fence anymore,since that seems to be what caused the problem between them in the first place.

Wow what a tense situation!!..Glad it's all over and worked out without any blood shed. Now hoping those other dog's don't come back and jump over your fence anymore,since that seems to be what caused the problem between them in the first place.

They have never actually drawn blood with each other, but this deal was the most sustained "punch fest" between them by far. Every so often, maybe once a year, she tries to take over, and it always fails, usually very quickly, since King is very dominating and just him staring at her makes her back off. He might not look look like much compared to many other dogs, but he mentally "outguns" any dog I've ever seen, and is in great condition.

I think her ego got a big boost by her being able to drive off a 100+ (at least) Lab basically by herself, and she decided "I'm bigger than him (King), and he can't be as tough as that bigger black dog was". Oh yes he can, he's a master of doggy head games, and if provoked, has shown that he can and will be more than willing to go at it if he has to. Most of the time, a look is all he needs, and Molly does what he wants.

King is a "lazy" leader, and will let her do all the work protecting the yard, as he did his littermate that ran the other pups around in the 13 pup litter they came from. King was backup,basically, the enforcer, but he only stepped in if he really needed to. The other pup ran around and herded the rest of the litter, while King slept on the couch and watched. His thing is never to waste energy, save it up for when it's needed, and then go totally insane. My friend's dogs are very intimidated by him, and he can still wear out any other dog by sheer stamina alone. He totally wore out my friends two boxers, along with his mother's dog who was visiting for a while, and was still trying to get one of the three to get up and run and wrestle around some more. The two boxers just finally rolled over on their backs and "we're done". The smaller of them outweighs him by about 20 pounds and the bigger one by about 30. The golden was amost 90. If King is on the heavy side, for him, he might crack 60. Right now he's 58.

People usually say, when they see King go off the deep end, "I've never seen anything like that before, he's totally insane!" It's like one of those crappy Kung-Fu movies where the hero moves insanely fast and his opponents just stand there and get pummelled by him at will.

Thanks. All is calm now. King is asleep at my feet, but giving me the semi cold shoulder for boarding him over the weekend. Normally, he's about as smoochy as he could be, but he's not wanting anything from me but food right now. Molly is so happy to be home that she is far cuddlier than normal for her, and is finally calm, well calm for her anyway.

I know what you mean, I feel sorry for her too, sometimes. When she tries to take over though, she kind of gets what she deserves. I would never have believed they could be so different and from the same litter. King's as calm as she is squirelly. At least she isn't scared of fireworks and that stuff, and and that's a huge plus.

We had the big black Lab in the yard again yesterday, grabbing bread (I guess I'll have to stop that) I put out. Molly went after him, and I got to the window just in time to see him going over the fence. I went out there, and he came over to the fence to visit, and he really is big, even bigger than I thought. I bet he's close to 120 pounds and isn't fat at all. He was very friendly, and strangely, Molly seemed ok with me petting him over the fence. King was in the house, screaming to be let out.

Molly got all confident again after running him off, and started up with the attempting to take over thing again. This time, it went bad from the first try, King wasn't sleeping like he was before and kicked her off and pinned her down, and held her there for quite a while. No growling, no weird noises he normally makes (They are both "talkers", she growls and he yodels, kind of like a rooster crowing), just staring at her, and breathing very loudly. He let her go, and sat on the floor, watching her intently. She tried to act like it didn't bother her, but her puffing gave her away. He got in between the food dish and her and she wanted it so bad, she would come towards it, and all King had to do was pick up his head, and she would run back to the couch. Finally, she tried again, and he looked at her, but didn't pick up his head, and she got to eat. Then when she finished, he walked alongside her, making eye contact the entire way to the couch. She jumps up and he stood there, and finally let loose with one big "YIP!", and she looked like her eyes were going to pop out of her head.

This amused King a lot, and he did his little dance he does when he wants to play. He got up on the couch and tried for about a half hour to get her to play (very rough wrestling), but all she did was try to lick him on the face, without making any eye contact. After he gave up, she came over with her big bone and they played tug of war for a while. That's the only thing they do where she doesn't wuss out on, she wins at it at least half the time, but King just lets her have it a lot of those times. She likes to chase the ball, King is totally uninterested, except when he flies by her and takes the ball. Then he sits there, "daring" her to take it. She always goes for it, and he aways makes believe that he really wants it, with all kinds of crazy noises. This frustrates the hell out of her, and she gets all upset, her lips get bright red (anytime she's hot, or upset) and her nose gets darker too. Finally she gets it, and runs for the couch, as if that can "save" her. He comes over and just looks at her, and she can't take it, she usually bails out and runs for the bedroom and King picks up the ball and hides it, then lets her see that he doesn't have it anymore. She eventually comes out and looks for the ball while King nods off, looking very happy about the whole thing. Sometimes he will wait for her to give up looking, and get the ball and give it to her, then carry it way and hide it again, and all this does is just totally confuse her. He loves to screw with her, but he never would really hurt her, and if she's actually in trouble, he will help out. If either one of them are sick, the other one is a basket case.